The 2014 Trading Technology 40: Ryan Sheftel

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Ryan Sheftel

Head of Fixed-Income Division E-Commerce

Credit Suisse

(Previously not ranked)

In 2009, when Ryan Sheftel left a hedge fund he had started two years earlier to join Credit Suisse in New York, “the firm was extremely prescient and had the view that the next markets that would be radicalized would be global interest rate swaps and government bonds,” he says. “Not only are they large markets, but they are generic products without idiosyncratic risks,” well suited to electronic trading. Then the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act mandated market-structure changes, notably the creation of swaps execution facilities (SEFs), and the fixed-income e-commerce business led by Sheftel was ahead of the game with its click-and-trade functionality. Through an application programming interface, clients can put trade ideas directly into Credit Suisse. “They can see our markets and trade with us without any human intervention,” explains Sheftel, 40, noting that the bank’s algorithmic fixed-income trades now outnumber those handled by traditional methods. “SEFs have forced the fixed-income community to quickly learn about electronic trading,” he adds. With dual undergraduate degrees in management and technology from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and School of Engineering in 1995, Sheftel started his career trading mortgage-backed securities at Lehman Brothers Holdings and subsequently worked in MBSs at Goldman Sachs Group and the systematic rates trading group at Citadel.